


Down to a Sunless Sea (Freshwater Mix)

by Isis



Category: Marco Polo (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Angst with a Happy Ending, Multi, Remix, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 21:29:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20316304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/pseuds/Isis
Summary: “I did not want to live,” Kokachin tells Jingim in a strangely sibilant voice.  “I gave myself to the water mother.  She healed my mind and changed my body.  I am no longer who I was.”





	Down to a Sunless Sea (Freshwater Mix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [marmolita](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marmolita/gifts).
  * A translation of [Down to a Sunless Sea](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8803633) by [marmolita](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marmolita/pseuds/marmolita). 
  * In response to a prompt by [marmolita](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marmolita/pseuds/marmolita) in the [2019remixrevivalmadness](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/2019remixrevivalmadness) collection. 

> The Marco Polo mermaid AU I didn't know I needed...to write. I loved the original story, but from the first few paragraphs I was expecting something slightly different, so I wrote that version. A few lines of dialog are lifted from the original.

She can not bring herself to look at the babies. She can not bring herself to look anywhere but at the floor of the _ger_, for she knows that if she were to look up – at the babies, at the wall-hangings, at the bowl of mare’s milk the Empress Chabi had told her to drink for strength – she would see only Kokachin. Even looking at the ground, she feels Kokachin’s withering gaze, her hatred.

There is nothing for it but to go out into the lake. The Empress her mother-in-law understands; she comes with her, wading alongside as the water becomes deeper, pulls at their robes, pulls at her heart. Empress Chabi presses gently down on her head as she sinks into that pull, giving her the strength to fight the panic that tells her to thrash and fight and surface and breathe.

She doesn’t hear the Empress gasp when the pressure against her downturned palm vanishes. She is beyond caring. She has already begun to transform, and all she can hear is the call of the deep.

* * *

Prince Jingim watches Marco walk around the shoreline, away from the bustle of the encampment. Despite the gulf between their cultures, he loves the Latin deeply; he is a brother, more than a brother. He has learned Jingim’s language and the ways of his tribe, and he will be an invaluable adviser when he is the great Khan, just as he is now to Jingim’s father. 

He had worried that Marco would return to his own land after Kokachin disappeared, after the Kurultai. Kublai had sent him away. Jingim had sighed in relief twice: once when, after nearly an entire season, Marco finally rode his horse back into Cambulac; the second time when Kublai decided, after all, to let the man live. 

Now they are back at the camp by the lake, the camp where his princess vanished a year ago. The babies are being seen to by a wet-nurse, and they don’t seem to care that this is the place where their mother left them. Jingim thinks they look neither like her or like himself. They look like babies.

Marco spends most of his time with Jingim, but in the early evenings he is nowhere to be seen until he slips into the circle around the fire, eating meat and laughing with the rest. Today Jingim has been vigilant. When Marco heads out into the woods, ostensibly to piss, Jingim follows at a distance, stepping quietly, concealing himself behind the trees so that he can’t be seen. He watches Marco make his way to the edge of the lake, and then along it, away from the encampment.

At a place where a rock juts into the water, Marco stops. He rolls up a sleeve, bends to the lake’s surface, and then slaps his open palm against the water in an irregular percussive pattern of fast and slow. A few moments pass, and he repeats his drumming.

Something breaks the surface near the end of the rock. It is a woman’s head – it is Kokachin’s head, Jingim realizes with wonder. His wife’s head, and then her arms, and she grasps the rock and heaves her body out of the water.

No. It is not her body. Or rather, only part of it is her body. Below the curves of her breasts fish-scales glitter, dots on her torso that thicken and join into what almost seems a slender skirt, disappearing into the water about where her knees should be. But he can see there are no knees, no legs under this skirt. Somehow he can tell it is part of her, the tail of the fishlike creature she has become.

There are other differences as well. Her lustrous skin has a glittery tinge to it, and her eyes seem larger. She takes a huge gasping breath, and narrow scars on her neck flutter. She takes another breath, an easier one, and then a third, and then the scars stop fluttering. It is as though she is slowly remembering how. 

From the cover of a small stand of bushes, Jingim watches the creature with (almost) his wife’s face reach out toward Marco, who grasps her hands in his larger ones. Her smile is luminous. He remembers when she smiled at him that way, and it makes his heart ache. He is not angry with Marco; how can he be? He suspects the same smile is on his own face when he looks at at Marco. 

“I should not be here,” Marco says to Kokachin. 

“But you _are_ here. And it makes me so happy!” Her voice is not quite the same as it used to be, either; it’s more sibilant, and there’s an unfamiliar undertone to it, like the sound of a stream rushing through reeds and over pebbles.

“I am always happy to see you, my princess. But I do not like keeping this from Jingim.”

A shock passes through him, hearing his name. Seeing her shake her head, water droplets flying from her slick black hair. “He won’t understand. He will be angry when he sees what I have become. He will kill me, which would be proper. But I don’t want to die, not any more.”

He remembers his mother’s words, after his wife had vanished. She had been quite dry-eyed. “The princess was troubled,” she had said. “But you will be strong for the children.”

“I’m not angry.” The words pour from his lips seemingly of their own volition, and he is no less surprised than Kokachin, who lets out a small cry as the water around her bubbles with the thrashing of...of her tail, yes, he will not turn away from that truth. Marco, too, looks surprised, but he only grasps her hands more tightly, not letting her dive beneath the surface as Jingim approaches. “I am relieved to see that you still live.”

“I did not want to live,” she tells him in that strangely sibilant voice. “I gave myself to the water mother. She healed my mind and changed my body. I am no longer who I was.”

“To me,” he says, “you are still Kokachin.”

She shakes her dripping head. “I was never Kokachin.”

Marco lets out a long breath, and Jingim frowns. “You know what she means?”

“That is her story to tell, if she chooses.”

He looks from one face to the other, both so familiar, both so beloved. “Do you – do you love her?”

Marco closes his eyes for a long moment. Then he opens them and meets Jingim’s gaze, and nods. “I’m sorry. I will leave tomorrow morning. Or tonight, if you wish.”

“What? No!” Jingim puts his hand on Marco’s arm. “You are my brother. How could I be angry at you for loving her, when I love her so much myself?” 

“I cannot be your wife, Jingim.” Kokachin gestures toward her legs that are no longer legs. “This lake is now my home.”

“You cannot be Marco’s wife, either.”

“That is not what –” Marco begins hotly, but Jingim squeezes Marco’s arm.

“I know. Our love is outside what is customary, so we must forge something new.” With his other hand, he gently unwraps Marco’s hand from one of Kokachin’s, and twines his fingers with hers. Now the three of them are connected, each to the other two. It feels right.

* * *

Nergui swims back down to her home, her heart content. She had often wondered why the water mother had healed her, saved her. Now she knows.

The tears in her eyes are tears of joy. They mix with the water of the lake, and swirl away.


End file.
